At the conclusion of Kitano Takeshi's (1) 2012 film Beyond
Outrage. renegade gangster Otomo (Beat Takeshi) shoots and kills his
high school kouhai, Kataoka (Kohinata Fumiyo). A corrupt police
detective. Kataoka had been manipulating both Otomo and other yakuza in
a bid to contain their growing influence. A sequel to Kitano's 2010
film Outrage, Beyond Outrage concludes the narrative arc of the earlier
film which centered around the Sanno-kai crime syndicate. As Adam
Bingham points out, Outrage lacks a protagonist in the conventional
sense (Bingham 2015, 56-57), but Otomo and his gang function as an
anchor to the narrative. A group of hapless servants, the drama of
Outrage stems from the Otomo family being exploited then ultimately
betrayed by their sworn kyodai ("brothers") and oyabun
("boss"). "We always get the dirty work." Otomo
remarks at one point. Having used his family to get rid of a rival gang,
the Sanno-kai leadership banishes Otomo before systematically killing
his men, one-by-one. In Beyond Outrage, Otomo returns with a vengeance,
bringing order both to the Sanno-kai and the underworld of Tokyo.

In their broad narrative arc. Outrage and Beyond Outrage are
somewhat comparable to most yakuza films produced in Japan. On initial
glance, what sets the films apart from the majority of yakuza cinema is
the fact that they were written, edited, and directed by Kitano Takeshi.
While known domestically since the 1970s for his work across media and
genres. Kitano rose to international prominence in the 1990s through the
film festival market. As with the majority of his work. Kitano also
stars in the Outrage films, billed under his acting pseudonym Beat
Takeshi. Formally, the film maintains all of the characteristics
associated with Kitano's work, including the slow and deliberate
pacing and cinematography, accented by sudden bursts of extreme
violence. Sean Redmond notes that Outrage experiments with sound, both
through dialogue and the soundtrack (Redmond 2013, 107-108), but for the
most part, the films do not diverge drastically in style. At the same
time, there is a critical shift in the Outrage films that warrants
closer investigation. While his past yakuza films tended to meditate on
the genre itself. Outrage and Beyond Outrage, especially in terms of
narrative arc, are much more conventional as serviceable genre exercises
by an established practitioner. One could of course convincingly argue
that the aging director is reaching the tail-end of his career (and
indeed Redmond notes that these are concerns are in the film) (Redmond
2013, 106) and that Outrage and Beyond Outrage pales in comparison to
earlier films such as his celebrated Hana-bi (Fireworks) (1998). And
yet, in the fact that Outrage and Beyond Outrage maintain Kitano's
signature formal style but pair it with what is for him. a regressive
and fairly typical narrative, point to a disconnect, an incongruity that
raises some questions. Why did Kitano Takeshi decide to make a yakuza
film after ten years away from the genre that helped establish him? Why
exactly did he decide to produce his first sequel? And why exactly does
the series devolve into standard genre fare?

In this article, I will perform a close reading of Outrage and
Beyond Outrage, paying special attention to the character of Otomo and
his relationship to the space of the yakuza. The conflict at the heart
of the films seems to bifurcate the cast of characters into opposite
factions: those who are loyal to Otomo and those who would exploit him.
Not only does this erect the moral scaffolding of Outrage, with the just
Otomo on one side and the repugnant yakuza on the other, it also
determines the gangsters' relationship to yakuza tradition.
Gangsters frequently denigrate the "old guard" and their
absurd, antiquated rituals. Those remarks are often targeted at Otomo
and his men--in doing so, the films also take a side. If Otomo and his
gang are the avowed protagonists of Outrage, then it follows
tautologically that it is their observance of yakuza law that makes them
so. The rituals and customs that today's yakuza routinely dismiss
as meaningless "formalities," are exactly what constituted the
foundation of the criminal world for Otomo, maintaining order and
keeping everyone in line. It was that which also helped maintain the
boundary between criminal and civilian, which was precisely why the
yakuza were able to otherwise coexist with the police.

The second binary that Outrage produces in relation to yakuza
tradition is generational. For the new generation of
twenty-first-century gangsters, exemplified by the young Ishihara (Kase
Ryo) and the treacherous Kato (Miura Tomokazu), those borders are meant
to be crossed. Under their aspirations the yakuza expand domestically
(into rival territory as well as Japanese parliament) and
internationally, into embassies and the stock market. Such ambition
requires nothing less than restructuring, a new corporate mandate
centered no longer around Confucian fielty and patriarchal seniority,
but rather a cutthroat ethos where employees step on the backs of their
colleagues and superiors in order to rise the ladder. On initial glance,
it is here, against Ishihara and Kato that the titular emotion of the
films is generated, for not only Otomo but also for Kitano Takeshi.
After all, the pair are situated as the films' most repugnant
antagonists.

A key filmmaker in contemporary East Asian cinema characterized by
its use of extreme violence. (2) Kitano has long been an agent
provocateur. But the shift in Outrage and Beyond Outrage is that
Kitano--as filmmaker and star--comes face to face with his own creation,
the twenty-first-century yakuza, and decides him to be so abhorrent that
he must utilize his full capacity as filmmaker to intervene. At the same
time, what must be remembered is the fact that Kato and Ishihara are not
the originators of such an objectionable organization. Instead, they are
merely inheritors of a structure that preceded them. Indeed, the true
source of ire in Outrage is Sekiuchi (Kitamura Soichiro), the father to
countless yakuza children, who manipulates his men's lives at whim.
It is in the oyabun's absolute authority--a thanatic power that
determines who will receive lawful favor and who will be banished--that
outrage, as abjection, is produced. Outrage is ultimately concerned with
the exercise of Sekiuchi's sovereign power, which results in
Otomo's death. But far from a critique of yakuza biopolitics, the
series continues with Otomo's return from the grave in Beyond
Outrage, turning his agency not unto the yakuza structure itself, but
rather those he determines to be its cancerous members. In the end, this
is the critical shift in the films of Kitano Takeshi, a divergence from
deconstructive critique to a conservative recovery of yakuza sentiment.

Yakuza Sign Systems and Yakuza Sovereignty

The Outrage films revolve around the Sanno-kai crime syndicate
based in the Kanto region, headed initially by the treacherous chairman
Sekiuchi who is eventually usurped by his lieutenant Kato. Among the
number of subordinate gangs under Sanno-kai jurisdiction (the yakuza
maintain a pyramid-like structure; is the Ikemoto family, who come under
scrutiny for their dealing in drugs, and for Ikemoto's blood
brother relationship to Murase (Ishibashi Renji). a leader of a rival
organization. Following Sekiuchi's desires, the Sanno-kai engage
the Murase family. However, the rules of engagement are entirely
different in Outrage. While conflict is clear in films such as The
Godfather (1972) (Francis Ford Coppola), oriented around a state of
emergency where mafiosos "go to the mattresses," the Sanno-kai
chain of command feign ignorance when Murase inquires about a violent
incident on his territory. Instead of systemic gangland hits where rival
organizations trade casualties, the Sanno-kai use an equally calculated
but far more unsavory strategy, having the Otomo family strike the
Murase-gumi under Ikemoto's orders. Both Sekiuchi and Ikemoto
exploit Murase, taking first monetary offerings before ultimately taking
his territory and forcing him to retire, while promising to broker peace
by getting a handle on the "rogue" Otomo. Otomo ultimately
kills the retired Murase, which caps off a series of actions that bucks
yakuza Law, the irony being that of course Otomo was the only one
observing the rules in the first place. But because Otomo was
"officially" acting alone (and also because he kills his
immediate superior Ikemoto once he realizes he has been deceived), the
Sanno-kai leadership are able to abandon him and tie up their own loose
ends. Otomo is banished while his men are killed one by one. In turn,
Otomo turns himself in to the police, only to be stabbed in prison by
Murase's former lieutenant Kimura (Nakano Hideo), whom Otomo had
brutally attacked to initiate hostilities.

By the end of Outrage, the Sanno-kai have positioned themselves as
the unrivaled criminal force in Tokyo at the small cost of one of their
many subordinate gangs [with Ikemoto, his lieutenant Ozawa (Sugimoto
Tetta), and everyone in the Otomo family save for Otomo himself and
Ishihara, dead]. Ironically, Sekiuchi's treachery catches up with
him, and so the film ends with Kato becoming chairman and Ishihara his
new lieutenant. Beyond Outrage picks up here, beginning with news
reportage of a slain police detective to immediately establish how
brazen and powerful the Sanno-kai have become. Concomitantly, the police
presence in the second film expands (Kataoka and his barely visible
partner were virtually the only police in Outrage), for the Sanno-kai
have become a problem that can no longer be ignored. Taking initiative,
Kataoka arranges an early release for Otomo and pairs him with Kimura.
While Otomo had killed Kimura's boss and Kimura had stabbed Otomo.
the two are both old-fashioned yakuza in that that particular
transaction has been concluded. By the time of Beyond Outrage, both men
share a grudge against the Sanno-kai (and Kimura also defers to Otomo
due to the older man's seniority). Kataoka then arranges for the
newly-formed gang to ally with the Hanabishi-kai syndicate, rivals to
the Sanno-kai located in Osaka. Although Otomo desires to take the offer
of a powerful benefactor and retire, he is compelled to have his
revenge, and kills Ishihara and orchestrates Kato's fall from
power. And yet, Otomo and Kimura remain pawns in the larger game between
the Sanno, Hanabishi, and the police, and so Otomo again becomes a
marked man while Kimura is killed. At the conclusion of Beyond Outrage,
mentioned at the opening of this paper, Otomo makes an appearance at
Kimura's funeral, knowing fully well that it is a trap. While
Kataoka assumes that Otomo will open tire at the attending yakuza. he
instead shoots the detective. The film then cuts to black.

On the surface, Otomo's motivation is quite straightforward:
he and the men in his care have been wronged and he desires reparations.
At the same time. the ending of Beyond Outrage where Otomo abruptly
kills Kataoka before the equally sudden final cut, gestures to something
more. Otomo's killing of Kataoka is not necessarily a strike
against law enforcement (after all. Otomo makes no other such overtures
to any other police), nor can it be attributed to Otomo's past
history with the detective; the two's complicated relationship
frequently invokes their days as high school boxers (a reference to
Kitano's 1996 film Kids Return) shuttling back and forth between
chummy jokes and hard punches. That Kataoka himself supplies Otomo with
a handgun to use at Kimura's funeral after he himself frisks the
older gangster, points to the fact that his own death was the last thing
on his mind. All of this is to say that in his shooting of Kataoka. we
can see that Otomo is not necessarily acting as a gangster against an
enemy, or as a person with a grudge against an old acquaintance. While
Otomo's

final act of violence may carry those meanings, it is clearly a
symbolic act.

Kataoka, like the other wretched figures of Outrage and Beyond
Outrage, Sekiuchi, Kato. and Ishihara. are part and parcel of a world
where the signifying system of the yakuza cannot be trusted for it
merely reinforces the authority of those already in power. In the case
of the Sanno- kai. the fundamental grievance regards the
organization's structure: instead of the amount of responsibility
increasing with each higher rank (from Otomo to Ozawa to Ikemoto to Kato
to Sekiuchi), the higher the kanbu (officer), the less accountability.
But despite this, the absolute power of the patriarch remains. In the
case of Outrage, this is Sekiuchi, with nearly everyone in the film
moving according to his whims. For the yakuza the pact--often made over
shared sake--is sacred, and Sekiuchi frivolously makes promises of such
to nearly all of his subordinates, whether it be Ikemoto, Ozawa. or
Otomo. or even Murase. a leader of a rival organization. The pact serves
as sufficient motivation for all of the parties involved, for it is the
promise of instant immunity through sponsorship--extended from the
oyabun to the signee. These of course are empty promises that the
chairman never intends to or actually does follow through on. Sekiuchi
thus occupies a particular space. As the head of the most powerful
yakuza syndicate he maintains a singular amount of authority. The yakuza
do his bidding purely on the basis of promise, operating under the
assumption that Sekiuchi will indeed extend favor. Sekiuchi's power
then is not based on an objective, meritorious framework where he is
served and he in turn rewards such service. Instead, it stems from his
ability to make an exception: while Otomo and his gang observe yakuza
law that hinges on honor and trust, Sekiuchi is not bound to such
tenets--he benefits from it but does not need to observe it himself. And
by allowing Sekiuchi to operate outside of yakuza principles, the
Sanno-kai in turn legitimate his absolute authority.

Sekiuchi thus operates in terms of Giorgio Agamben's
theorization of sovereignty, elaborating on Carl Schmitt's
assertion that, "Sovereign is he who decides on the state of
exception" (as cited in Agamben 1998, 13). By excluding himself
from yakuza order, Sekiuchi is able to determine when its laws are in
effect and when they become suspended. For Agamben, who argues that the
state of exception is the paradigmatic model for the modern polis, the
political order has its own suspension built into its own fabric. In the
same way that a constitution includes the exceptional cases in which it
can be bracketed, the Sanno-kai is not "corrupt" per se as
Otomo would argue. Instead, Sekiuchi's false promises are part and
parcel of the syndicate's decidedly normal operations. Furthermore,
as Sekiuchi promises then denies clemency to Otomo and others (who were
compromised because of his machinations to begin with) the chairman also
constantly positions his men in liminal spaces, both outcast from the
syndicate but subject to yakuza sanctions. Sekiuchi truly becomes
Agamben's sovereign then, in producing Otomo as homo sacer, the
sacred man who "may be killed and yet not sacrificed" (Agamben
1998, 12) simultaneously accounted for in the polis but stripped of his
"capacity for political existence" (Agamben 1998, 10).
Otomo's abjection ultimately stems from his biopolitical status
(Foucault 1990, 140). On the other hand, despite seeing this process
happen again and again, the gangsters of Outrage fetishistically
disavow, assuming that the chairman will exercise his sovereign power to
make an exception for them and them only.

Sekiuchi's direct subordinate, the underboss Kato. is the only
one to understand this dynamic, perhaps because he is the one issuing
the actual orders, "translating" the chairman's rhetoric
into clear and concise directions. Knowing fully well that Sekiuchi has
no intention of spreading the wealth, Kato outmaneuvers the elder
yakuza, killing him and setting up a fall guy, just as they had done to
Otomo. Kato thus ascends to the position of sovereignty in taking the
power to choose the exception. That Sekiuchi's power has been
somewhat transferred to Kato is evident in Beyond Outrage, as he too is
able to influence his disgruntled subordinates into betraying one
another. In addition to Kato, Kataoka also emerges as a successor to
Sekiuchi in the second film. The wily Kataoka capitalizes on the
internal strife within the yakuza, pitting them against one another. In
doing so, the yakuza are effectively contained, Kataoka is able to claim
credit within the police force, while also demonstrating his value to
the Sanno-kai. Depending on how and when it suits him, Kataoka pledges
allegiance to his superiors, Kato and Ishihara, the Hanabishi, Kimura,
and most fatally, Otomo. For Kataoka, this is not a conflict of
interests, so much as his sovereign ability to select which contingent
he is able to align himself with and at whichever moment.

It is a fatal mistake on Kataoka's part to claim loyalty to
Otomo because he fails to realize that Otomo and his men are cut from a
different cloth. In the majority of Kitano's films, gangsters are
somewhat inscrutable figures (heightened by Beat Takeshi's
unaffected performances), seemingly indifferent to the violence that
surrounds them and that they themselves participate in. To this, while
many of the yakuza have been partially sympathetic figures, the films
have never shied away from their horrible actions; while they may enjoy
quiet moments on the beach, these were the same men that unflinchingly
committed unspeakable acts of violence. As Kitano's international
profile hinged on his genre cinema, his yakuza films maintained a sense
of ambivalence, with the gangsters consistently being critiqued if not
outright ridiculed. A prime example is the custom of cutting one's
own pinky as penance, an act which devolves into farce in both Boiling
Point (1990) (3-4 x jugatsu) (through one gangster's comedic
refusal to do so) and Outrage (when Kimura is unable to do so with a box
cutter). Placed in the genealogy of Fukasaku Kinji's seminal
Battles without Honor and Humanity (Jingi naki tatakai) (1973-1974)
series and in dialogue with his contemporary Miike Takashi, who
challenged the yakuza subgenre to even greater lengths, Kitano's
yakuza are a far cry from the romanticism of dominant crime cinema. The
Outrage films too offer an unflattering perspective on the yakuza. but
the major caveat is that the critique is partial for it does not include
Otomo. Kimura. and the other members of the Otomo family. What's
more, it is not only that the Otomo family maintain some form of moral
code, it is that the Outrage films suggest that that code is inherently
linked to yakuza tradition. In the 2010s then, yakuza culture is no
longer a subject of critique. Subsequently, Outrage and Beyond Outrage
seem to suggest that it is yakuza rituals, if properly observed, that
can generate some sort of social honesty and/or balance; it is not that
the yakuza themselves are a menace, but rather the corrupt yakuza that
are the problem.

This also partially explains Otomo's character arc in Outrage.
Otomo's exasperation of "always getting the dirty work"
points to a partial understanding of how his family can never benefit
from the current yakuza. And yet, Otomo continues to carry out that
dirty work. To the film's credit, this could be seen as a pointed
instance of fetishistic disavowal, or a moment that demonstrates the
hegemony by consent, where Otomo follows Ikemoto's bidding despite
the fact that he knows he will be betrayed. However, his genuine
surprise when he discovers that Ikemoto was lying to him. his vengeful
murder of Ikemoto. as well as his last bid attempt to parlay with
Sekiuchi after being banned for the murder of Murase all point to both
Otomo's naivety and belief in the chain of command. That faith
leads to the demise of the Otomo family, and it is here, in the
revelation of the absolute lack of truth in Sanno-kai politics that the
film's titular emotion emerges. The second film affirms this,
suggesting a limit point that has been crossed and then detailing the
aftermath: Otomo's righteous vengeance. Outrage suggests that prior
to the film's events, Otomo was a sovereign actant on behalf of the
Sanno-kai. But upon exposure to his biopolitical relation to power,
Otomo transitions into an abject agent of vengeance.

Outrage, Biopolitics, and Abjection

In Powers of Horror, Julia Kristeva theorizes abjection as a
dialectical process that occurs in the confrontation between Self and
the absolute alterity of the Other. In turn, that confrontation troubles
normative Cartesian relationships. Something occurs in this meeting that
causes the Self to shuttle from desire to horror, a realization
emanating from the fact that the Other stands in opposition to oneself
and cannot be properly incorporated. This process for Kristeva, is
inherently violent (Kristeva 1982). Japanese cinema has long dealt in
the abject, going beyond the normalized relationships of commercial
narrative cinema to incite the spectator in defamiliarized ways. Major
instances of abject Japanese cinema include the Japanese New Wave, the
pink eiga and chanbara of the 1970s, or more contemporary genres such as
J-Horror and of course, yakuza cinema. Kitano Takeshi too belongs to
this genealogy. In one of the most harrowing sequences of Outrage, Otomo
and his underboss Mizuno (Shiina Kippei) ambush Murase at the dentist
and proceed to mangle his open mouth with a drill. In another, Mizuno
jams a chopstick into a man's ear, invoking a scene from Hana-bi
where Nishi (Beat Takeshi) stabs a man in the eye with the eating
utensil. Both scenes speak to the ruthless brutality of Kitano's
work as well as the longer tradition of discomforting Japanese cinema.
But I am less interested here in the abjection that the violence
produces in the spectator: read in those terms, Outrage and Beyond
Outrage become less exceptional. Instead, what is compelling about the
films is that there is abjection within the films themselves, a
repulsion that is directed inward at the films' own characters.

What Outrage and Beyond Outrage ultimately do then is draw out a
potential relationship between abjection and biopower. Reading Outrage
and Beyond Outrage in relation to Kitano Takeshi's broader oeuvre
underlines a shift that occurs in these films that stems from their
abjection. On the surface level, Otomo's self-actualization in
Beyond Outrage is an act of resistance to the corrupt Sanno-kai and
police. But to go further, the true source of Otomo's anger is in
his unfolding comprehension regarding yakuza politics. For Otomo and
Kimura, word is indeed bond, and one that has direct connection to what
is more often than not. brutal consequences. For the others, language
does have the same sort of binding power in that the conversations
between the characters, whether they be in boardrooms, offices, or
interrogation rooms maintain the social order. At the same time, those
symbolic bonds are what allow for their own suspension (Agamben 2005)
with Sekiuchi and Kato lulling their subordinates into a false sense of
security with false promises, making them vulnerable for continued
exploitation. The entire symbolic order of Outrage has little to no
bearing on the social conditions.

And yet, that the symbolic order retains power in the Outrage films
by maintaining the social organization suggests two things. For one, it
points to the performative quality of discourse, both in Judith
Butler's ideas regarding gender performativity but also in relation
to Michel Foucault's theorization of knowledge-power. In the same
way that Butler argues that there is no ontology to be found in either
sex or gender (Butler 1990), Otomo is dismayed to discover that the
yakuza are not grounded by ahistorical metaphysics. This is also to say
that while Otomo may believe that he and his like-minded men are
anchored by a stable, coherent, unified gangster identity, they are only
yakuza inasmuch as they perform as yakuza, through their clothing,
mannerisms, and language. While there is no truth to the yakuza, this is
not to suggest that there is no social reality. And this is precisely
what Foucault explicates in his genealogy of the modern understanding of
the criminal. The criminal (and the yakuza) is not an ontological
category, or a species that simply exists, to be discovered and
recorded--rather, it is in that discourse itself, be it legal, medical,
academic, or cultural, that produces the very figure of the criminal as
an object of study, an act of description and prescription operating
under the guise of the former (Foucault. 1995).

Second, the symbolic order of Outrage suggests the possibility that
honesty is in fact unnecessary to a social organization. In its stead is
an entirely dishonest discourse that binds the polis, allowing for a
mass fetishistic disavowal. In fact, we can observe such a form of
cynical ideology (Zizek 1989) in Outrage, precisely through the
invocation of the formality. When any subordinate is put into an
unfavorable position, be it Murase's retirement or Otomo's
banishment. Sekiuchi is quick to assure the affected party that the
measure is a mere "formality," there only to keep appearances.
In doing so, the chairman not only acknowledges that the
organization's rituals and rules are purely performative, he also
admits that there is a gap between the symbolic order and the lived
reality. In addition, the yakuza chairman superficially problematizes
the power of language, the very same that sustains his sovereignty. The
invocation of the formality is thus a formality in and of itself, a
necessary procedure in the byzantine maintenance of the social relations
and a toothless critique. Sekiuchi proclaims that Otomo's
banishment is merely ritual, when in fact it is a genuine act of
political exclusion. The rest of the Sanno-kai fetishistically believe
their chairman, operating as if they did not know that Otomo has been
effectively sentenced to death. The cynical ideology of the Sanno-kai
subordinates (who convince themselves that they will not end up like
Otomo) is what valorizes Sekiuchi's language. As such his facile
self-implication reveals the statement of the mere ritual as empty of
content, a purely performative gesture that legitimizes both his
sovereignty and his subjects' disavowal. In turn, the supposed
self-critique of the ritual banishment in turn sustains the very real
banishment, an act of simultaneous inclusion and exclusion, which
ultimately articulates Sekiuchi's absolute sovereignty. Not only
does exclusion legitimize sovereignty, it also operates as a principle
act that affirms the presence of abjection. That which cannot be
properly incorporated is ejected, and "yet, from its place of
banishment, the abject does not cease challenging its master"
(Kristeva 1982, 2).

This dynamic is at the heart of the films' scandal. But there
is yet more to the ire of Outrage and Beyond Outrage. In the case of
Sekiuchi, his manipulation of the Sanno-kai yakuza almost seems without
reason, as if they are the idle machinations of an aging despot. In
reality of course, it is precisely those maneuverings that constitute,
sustain, and reify his power. His is a "mythic violence," a
"mere manifestation of the gods," "not a means to their
ends, scarcely a manifestation of their will, but primarily a
manifestation of their existence" (Benjamin 2004, 248). But on the
level of character motivation, the only reason provided is that Sekiuchi
disagrees with the decisions of his subordinates. What we must consider
though is the fact that even though he is one of the most reprehensible
characters in the films, he is not positioned as such. Even though Otomo
acts out primarily because of Sekiuchi, his ire is not directed at the
oyabun. And this is the limitation of the Outrage films.

If abjection occurs in the encounter with that which cannot be
properly incorporated, it is a reorientation of Self and Other where
that which is abject is expelled or banished. But inasmuch as the abject
is not object, united only in their opposition to the sovereign
"I" (Kristeva 1982, 2), it is also the sacred man. In both the
state of exception and in abjection, we find a dialectic of exclusion,
borders, and subjectivity, where the sovereign subject simultaneously
includes and excludes those who are bound to his authority. As
Sekiuchi's sovereign selfhood requires differentiation by way of
exclusion, he incessantly reproduces his subordinates into abject sacred
men. Finding himself in the same position, Otomo is able to transform
his abject subjectivity into a form of agency that threatens to reveal
the grounds on which the yakuza world stands. But by refusing a
ruthless, thorough critique of biopolitical yakuza sovereignty, and by
suggesting that it is a system that has been corrupted but can be
repaired. Otomo and Kitano displace the true source of abjection. In
doing so. both Sekiuchi and his form of rule is ultimately exonerated.

The Twenty-First-Century Gangster

In Sekiuchi's stead, the anger of Outrage is displaced onto
Kato, Ishihara. and Kataoka. Those three characters, who are all
punished by the end of Beyond Outrage share one thing in common: their
dedication to personal gain. David Desser notes that the tension between
girt (obligation and responsibility) and jingi (the code of honor) in
opposition to ninjo (personal inclination) is a fundamental pillar of
yakuza cinema (as cited in Redmond 2013, 107). The Outrage films thus
separate themselves from this history in assigning a historical
particularity to Kato and Ishihara (and by extension, the cop/criminal
Kataoka)--after all, these are twenty-first- century gangsters. What
separates Kato and Ishihara is their pathological preoccupation with
personal gain as well as the ways in which they pursue that goal.
Neither Kato and Ishihara are interested in skimming from the
organization, whether it be embezzling some funds or skimping on their
tributes to their superiors. They are categorically separate from the
small-minded thinking of Ikemoto, who seems to be only interested in
continuing to sell drugs on his territory under the chairman's
nose. Kato and Ishihara desire the entire operation, a desire they are
able to see through by the beginning of Beyond Outrage. That Ishihara. a
low-level member of the Otomo family, itself one of the lowest-ranking
gangs in the syndicate, is promoted to the chairman's top
lieutenant points to two things: Kato's complete disregard for
yakuza customs (which is precisely what rankles his lieutenants and
plants the seeds for a justified mutiny) and also his forward-thinking
mentality that values Ishihara's initiative. Under Ishihara's
leadership, and without the Murase-gumi family to contend with, the
Sanno-kai expands their operations into the stock market, hedge funding,
and eventually. Japanese parliament.

Ishihara is the yakuza's benefactor, leading the Sanno-kai
into a brave new world. And Outrage makes clear from the very beginning
that Ishihara is an extraordinary gangster. Seen initially in a sequence
set in the humble office of the Otomo family, Ishihara is framed to the
rear left of the shot. Sitting alone at a desk, Ishihara is further
isolated by the fact that there is simply no one else in the room that
looks remotely like him. The youngest yakuza in both films (although
Kimura employs a pair of hotheaded youths in Beyond). Ishihara is tall,
slender, and attractive, very much a metrosexual gangster. On the other
end of the spectrum is the stalwart Abe (Morinaga Kenji). an equally
tall but burly gangster, whose shoulders are as square as his buzzcut.
In between are a number of gangsters that fit the aesthetic established
in both Kitano's earlier work, as well as those produced by Miike
(Shiina Kippei for example, starred in Miike's 1995 film Shinjuku
Triad Society). A bishonen ("beautiful young boy") to the
family's stone- faced men, the educated Ishihara flaunts his global
imagination with grand schemes and near-fluent English.

Even more than Kato or Kataoka, Otomo is placed in direct
opposition to Ishihara. Save for the fact that both are yakuza, the two
men share little else in common. And it is in establishing this almost
ontological difference that Kitano walks back on the critique of his
earlier films. While films such as Sonatine (1993) and Hana-bi tended to
deconstruct the codes of the yakuza. Outrage and Beyond Outrage bolsters
them. It is no longer the case that yakuza such as Otomo and his men are
merely playing gangsters, but rather that they are gangsters, or at
least constitute the authentic core of Japanese organized crime. That
institution in turn, is threatened by the cutthroat attitudes of Kato
and Ishihara, which is why the "real" yakuza must be
mobilized. It is as if the cinematic production of the
twenty-first-century gangster necessitated the return of the old guard,
an old guard that had been for the most part, absent in the filmography
of Kitano Takeshi. In turn then, Otomo's vengeance almost becomes a
noble crusade in Beyond Outrage, a last-ditch effort for the
preservation of life that was thoroughly critiqued in Boiling Point,
Sonatine, and Hana-bi. Out of all of Kitano's (and Beat
Takeshi's) yakuza, Otomo becomes anointed.

Agency, Narrative, and Violence

Bingham has an insightful reading of the opening of Outrage, where
the camera pans across a sea of yakuza faces, low-level gangsters
waiting outside of the Sanno-kai compound as their superiors attend a
banquet. Only when the camera has passed three-fourths of the men does
the spectator see the familiar face of Beat Takeshi. The shot does not
linger on Otomo, treating him no differently from anyone else in that
particular black-clad crowd. Bingham reads this sequence in relation to
Otomo's narrative arc, contending that Outrage does not privilege
the aging gangster (Bingham 2015, 57-58). This is true to a certain
degree. It is indeed more accurate to say that Otomo is caught in the
events of Outrage. While Otomo was all but helpless in Outrage, strung
along by the machinations of the Sanno-kai and Kataoka, in the sequel he
represents nothing less than an existential threat to Kato and Ishihara,
bestowed with an almost mythical power. Tapped by Kataoka. Otomo
suddenly emerges from prison as the most feared man in the Outrage
universe. It is as if he is "a threat that seems to emanate from an
exorbitant outside or inside, ejected beyond the scope of the possible,
the tolerable, the thinkable" (Kristeva 1982, 1). The threat that
Otomo poses is confirmed by Ishihara's increasingly unhinged
outbursts at his Sanno-kai subordinates to find and kill his former
oyabun. This is partially out of legitimate fear of Otomo, but also Kato
and Ishihara's dread that the symbolic order will fall apart for
them as it did for Sekiuchi.

In Beyond Outrage, there thus is absolutely no question that Otomo
is the film's protagonist. In becoming the anti-hero of a revenge
plot, Otomo is arbiter of justice as it coincides with his vengeance--it
just so happens that those who have transgressed him are also morally
suspect. I thus read Otomo's unusually effective violence as a
force that reinstates his own masculine capacity to affect change in
response to the absolute powerlessness that he and his allies initially
maintain. Through his righteous violence, Otomo is able to almost
singlehandedly change the landscape of the filmic Tokyo. In a broad
sense, Otomo aligns with the protagonist of classical Hollywood cinema
(Bordwell et al 1985), especially in films oriented around conflict,
where narrative agency equates to the ability to make the necessary
actions that will bring resolution. But more particularly, in Beyond
Outrage, agency is a liminal form of subjectivity that follows loss
(Otomo's traumatic encounter with yakuza biopolitics), wherein new
purpose is gained. Moreover, considering Otomo's symbolic death
following his "merely ritual" banishment, and his ostensible
real death at the conclusion of Outrage, agency is acquired through
restorative vengeance. As Otomo returns from the grave in Beyond
Outrage, an exceptional figure in the work of Kitano Takeshi, presents
agency itself as abject--as opposed to the classical gangster who is
wanted dead or alive, Otomo is both.

Otomo's singular violence is thus explained. To be clear,
while exceptional, it is not that Otomo is without precedent. The
aesthetics of violence in Outrage and Beyond Outrage and Otomo's
single-minded viciousness recall Kitano's directorial debut.
Violent Cop, or Sono otoko, kyobd ni tsuki, "Caution: This Man Is
Violent." But because the narrative structure of the two films
clearly bifurcate its subjects according to morality, Otomo's
violence gains a degree of instrumentality it initially lacked, a
remedial tool that can correct an ironically inhumane political
organization. Otomo and his men may be horrible, violent men, but they
also know their place, and that they must not disturb the civilian world
(this is the implied significance of when yakuza such as Murase or Kato
"retire," as they ostensibly leave the underworld). As opposed
to Murakawa or Uehara, Otomo becomes a lesser of two evils and moreover,
a necessary evil spawned by Kato and Ishihara's ambition. In the
scale of evils, Otomo occupies the space of least transgressive, for his
violence has been directed at those who ostensibly "deserved
it." In succeeding in his vendetta, the connection between
narrative agency as character-driven and violence, ultimately becomes
validated.

As a response to the injustice of Outrage, Beyond Outrage moves
past a limit point, both in its status as Kitano's first sequel, as
well as its use of uncritical, pro-social violence. Read alone, Outrage
does actually align to a certain degree with Kitano's earlier work.
By the end of the film, Otomo has been betrayed and is perhaps dying
after being stabbed by Kimura in prison, and while Sekiuchi is dead, he
has been replaced by another foul gangster, Kato, with the treacherous
Ishihara at his side. Similarly, the deceitful Kataoka has also been
promoted. The vile have been rewarded while the just have been punished.
And while the violence in both films formally aligns with its use in
other Kitano Takeshi films, the fact that when read together, the
violence does not generate problems on the narrative level but instead
decisively concludes the narrative is a departure. Beyond Outrage thus
becomes one of Kitano's most conservative films to date. To be
clear, it is not that Outrage and Beyond Outrage are the only films
where Kitano uncritically uses cinematic violence. His 2003 chanbara
film Zatoichi may be his most conventional film, which also happened to
be his most commercially-successful. As things would have it, Outrage
was also a commercial success for the director. On the other end,
another film that was far more mainstream than the majority of his films
is the final yakuza film Kitano produced before Outrage, the 2000 film
Brother. A US coproduction meant to be his initial foray into the
American market, Brother sees Beat Takeshi play outcast gangster
Yamamoto. Exiled to Los Angeles, Yamamoto creates a multiethnic crew
with an African-American lieutenant named Denny (Omar Epps) that loosens
the grip of the local gangs. Eventually coming to the attention of the
mafia, Yamamoto is killed in a blaze of glory. Brother fulfilled the
expectations of its international genre cinema audience (although it
ultimately failed), providing the requisite yakuza iconography coupled
with Kitano's version of "Asian cool."

The Outrage films do not celebrate yakuza imagery to the same
degree, but they do ultimately maintain the ontology of the culture. By
doing so, Outrage and Beyond Outrage are somewhere between the familiar
motifs of Brother and the autocritique of Hana-bi and Sonatine. Instead
of the absurdity and relegation of his earlier work, the violence of
Beyond Outrage is a legitimate means to legitimate ends. This is not
only a critical shift in the work of Kitano Takeshi, it is also in some
senses, a political reversal. Beyond Outrage operates almost as an
intervention, as if Otomo had to return to the Sanno-kai's Tokyo in
order to right the previous film's wrong. It is as if the problem
that the Sanno-kai--or more accurately, what was being displaced onto
the Sanno-kai--was so great that it required nothing less than a much
more forceful reaction.

I bring up Beyond Outrage's status as a sequel in relation to
the extratextual dimension of the films. We have to, after all. keep in
mind that Kitano is not only operating as Beat Takeshi in his
performance as Otomo, but also as Kitano Takeshi, writer, editor, and
director. What does it mean that on this metatextual level, the
character of Otomo is all but impotent--not unlike Kitano's other
yakuza--only to have absolute agency in Beyond Outrage. Otomo's
sudden and almost arbitrary acquisition of power points to Kitano's
sovereignty as the dominant voice of his work. In other words, this is
less an issue of authorial intent so much as it is an issue of auteurist
sovereignty. Even though Kitano became one of Japan's most
representative filmmakers precisely through thoughtful critiques of
violent masculinity, he has always maintained the power that he
actualizes in Beyond Outrage throughout his productions (and perhaps in
the landscape of Japanese arthouse cinema as well). As a result, the
critique of violence and yakuza cinema become substantially
problematized; Kitano's sovereignty as a director also allowed for
a form of autocritique. of political analysis of violent masculine
agency, precisely because that agency would always remain available to
him. And Beyond Outrage is configured precisely as such a crisis moment,
where the Sanno-kai--and perhaps Kitano's flagging international
reputation--was enough to bring Otomo back from the dead.

Conclusion

In this essay, I have read Outrage and Beyond Outrage in the
context of Kitano Takeshi's gangster cinema, focusing on the manner
in which yakuza sovereignty is a system of liminal borders where its
subjects are included and then displaced. In comparison to the dismal
end of Outrage, Beyond Outrage becomes an intervention in cinematic
Tokyo where the disenfranchised gangster Otomo becomes a mighty proctor
of criminal justice. I have argued that this shift is initially
generated by a repulsion by yakuza biopolitics, only to be displaced
onto a new type of gangster--it is not that the yakuza world is
repulsive in and of itself, it is that it has become progressively
corrupted by a few key individuals, who must be eradicated by utilizing
the entirety of Kitano Takeshi's power, as actor, editor, writer,
and influential director. For the remainder of the paper, I would like
to cautiously wade into more speculative territory, to further probe
just what exactly the Outrage films found to be so beyond the pale. I
believe that answers may be found by gesturing beyond the texts
themselves, towards the historical context of their production and
consumption.

In Kitano's 1998 film Hana-bi, a supporting character makes a
small remark regarding her life following the death of her detective
husband. The widow tells the visiting Nishi, "Because of the
recession, good jobs are hard to come by. But I'm helping out at a
deli..." The recession that the woman speaks of is the one of
course initially referred to as "The Lost Decade," or the ten
years that followed the 1991 collapse of Japan's bubble economy. An
innocuous, seemingly unrelated remark in Hana-bi. it is also a comment
that helps orient the seemingly-hopeless conditions and arbitrary
suffering that the characters experience over the film's running
time. At the beginning of Outrage, before hostilities have bloomed
between the Sanno-kai and the Murase-gumi, a low-level thug attempts to
convince a member of the Otomo family to visit his bar. The thug Iizuka
(Tsukamoto Takashi) intends on scamming the Otomo gang member Okazaki
(Sakata Tadashi), oblivious to the fact that he is a member of a rival
clan. Okazaki in turn, is himself looking to swindle the conman, another
elaborate instance of performances and deceit, as it is all part of a
plan to entrap the Murase-gumi into a gang war. Iizuka attempts to
attract Okazaki with the promise of attractive escorts, telling him,
"Our nightclub gets high class girls due to the recession."

The recession that Iizuka mentions in 2010 is not the widow's
recession of 1998. Well into the second "Lost Decade," both
the cinematic and actual Japan has yet to fully recover, despite
governmental reassurances otherwise. In another revealing scene in
Hana-bi, the film's yakuza talk amongst themselves, waxing poetic
on the difference between a businessman and a gangster (the former does
not have a gun). Wondering how the film's protagonist, the rogue
detective Nishi, was able to pay back the exorbitant amount of money he
owed them, one of the low-level gangsters jokes that he may have robbed
a bank (which is exactly what he did). He continues, joking that the
gang's boss would also do the same if he were interested in
increase operations. The boss retorts that if he were looking to expand,
he would go into the stock market. What was merely daytime musings for
the 1998 yakuza of Hana-bi has become a reality for the 2012 Sanno-kai,
spearheaded by Ishihara, who unlike his peers, superiors, and
subordinates, came of age precisely in the Lost Decades.

Ishihara is a millennial gangster injected with the neoliberal
spirit--not only do his aspirations know no bounds, desiring for the
syndicate to penetrate every single crevice possible. Motivated perhaps
by the destitute conditions of precarious labor, caused precisely by
neoliberal reform, which was supposed to end the Lost Decade instead of
doubling down on it. Kitano Takeshi, as Otomo, watches this entire scene
play out, and the Outrage films become filled with disgust and
nostalgia. At one point in Outrage, a Ghanian ambassador, who speaks
fluent Japanese, utters to himself in English, "No way. I
won't do business with your kind." Much to his shock, Ishihara
responds in equally fluent English, "Keep talking like that. And
we'll fucking kill you." The Ghanian ambassador's remark
was a blanket statement that had a broad notion of brutish thugs and
criminals in mind. He did not expect Ishihara, yakuza who were educated,
motivated, and ambitious. According to Outrage and Beyond Outrage, these
are the real gangsters to be feared, not the ones holding a gun. In the
context of the twenty-first- century, and compared to Ishihara, the
yakuza of Sonatine and Hana-bi look quaint, even noble. Instead of
pushing further in his critique of yakuza violence, examining that which
the gangsters of both Hana-bi and Outrage share, Kitano instead turns
away.

In 2017, Kitano Takeshi once again ventured into new territory by
releasing a second sequel, the final film in the Outrage series, titled
Outrage Coda. At the time of writing, Outrage Coda has not been released
on home video in North America. Outside of Japan, it premiered at the
Venice Film Festival. Judging from reviews of the film and footage
available on streaming sites such as YouTube however, suggests that Coda
not only continues the course of Beyond, it also escalates it. In the
film, Otomo takes up the offer for sanctuary made in Beyond by his
powerful benefactor, the Korean "fixer" Jang Dae-seong (that
the film features an ethnically Korean character is indicative of this
new criminal globalization, for unlike Miike, Kitano's gangsters
have traditionally been Japanese). But the elimination of the Sanno-kai
has not rid Tokyo of corruption and manipulation, and Otomo continues
his vendetta, this time directed at the Hanabishi, his one-time allies.
Because Outrage Coda was not screened for this article, there remains
the possibility that it will deviate from the trajectory established by
the first two films. There remains the chance that the film will return
to the sharp critique of Kitano's earlier work, and bring it to
bear on what Outrage reveals, that patriarchal yakuza sovereignty comes
at the expense of the abject Other, and what Beyond Outrage quickly
displaces in its restorative masculine fantasy. We can hope that perhaps
it is in that movement from film to film that necessitated not one but
two sequels, and Outrage Coda will deconstruct not only its two
preceding films, itself, and its filmmaker, revealing that the yakuza
and with him, the filmmaker, is not and never was, wearing any clothes.